Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Teachers’ Pension Scheme was reformed by the UK Government under the Public Service Pension Act 2013 along with the other main public service pension schemes in the UK. All schemes are broadly comparable and are based on Career Average Revalued Earnings. Apart from the uniformed public services, all schemes have a pension age linked to State Pension age.

The Scottish Government has no functions in relation to the changes introduced by the UK Government's reform of public service pensions.

There are three early retirement options available to members of the Scottish Teachers’ Pension Scheme who have reached normal minimum pension age:

• Premature Retirement is an option if a member is made redundant or retires in the interest of efficiency. The pension would be actuarially reduced because the member is retiring early and employer must agree to make up the shortfall to the full pension amount. Therefore, there is no impact on the final pension amount the member receives.
• Voluntary Early Retirement is where the member chooses to receives an actuarially reduced pension. The benefits are reduced to take into account the fact the pension will be paid over a longer period of time than a normal retirement pension.
• Phased Retirement allows members to take up to 75% of their pension while reducing their working commitment. To do this, members must reduce their pensionable salary by at least 20% for a minimum of 12 months. Any percentage of pension benefits taken before normal pension age would be subject to an actuarial reduction.

The death of any child or young person is a tragedy. The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that the death of any looked after child or young person is accurately reported on and reviewed to improve services and ensure that children and young people are receiving the best care possible.

In February of this year, the Scottish Government published revised guidance on Regulation 6 of The Looked After Children (Scotland) Regulations 2009 (legislation.gov.uk) . The revised guidance clarifies that it is the responsibility of local authorities to notify Scottish Ministers when there has been a death of a looked after child or young person. This includes the provision of information such as the cause of death, DOB and the legal status of a child or young person that has died. This information is not published by the Scottish Government but is shared with Scottish Ministers who have powers to request further information if it is required.

Additionally, a National Hub was established in October 2021 to review and learn from the deaths of all live born children and young people in Scotland up to the date of their 18th birthday, or 26th birthday for care leavers who are in receipt of aftercare or continuing care at the time of their death. The National Hub review each death is reviewed and an overall annual report is produced.

The National Hub is managed by Health Improvement Scotland and the Care Inspectorate and published its first annual data overview report, covering the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023, on 19 March 2024.

Grants to organisations for people with care experience by age

The Scottish Government remains committed to meeting this ambition by 2030 and continues to explore how we can enable a transformational change in the delivery of preventative whole family support and how we can take a cross portfolio approach to supporting work on prevention. In addition, we are currently preparing a Whole Family Wellbeing investment approach on supporting the provision of preventative, holistic family support.

The scope and purpose of the data collections associated with the children’s social work and homelessness statistics are very different. Additionally, this means that the sources cover different periods of the lives of care experienced children and young people.

The looked after children data collection (which is used for the Children’s Social Work statistics) relates to all children and young people who are in the care of their local authority. It includes information on placement type and care plans of children who are looked after.

The HL1 homelessness data collection (which is used for both the Homelessness in Scotland and youth homelessness statistics) relates to all households making an application to a local authority for homelessness support. This includes information on whether any adult member, aged under 25, of a household making a homelessness application was looked after as a child by their local authority.

Looked after status captured within HL1 will largely be self-reported by applicant households. Applicants can choose whether to answer the question. It should also be noted that it is not necessarily the case that the looked after status of all adults aged under 25 in the household will be known.

The Homelessness in Scotland series publishes data on former looked after status of households assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness. The youth homelessness workbook presents the former looked after status for households specifically with a main applicant aged under 25.

The HL1 data collection also captures information on the outcome of the application, and circumstances related to the application (such as reason for homelessness, property homeless from etc.). It can also be linked to the HL3 (temporary accommodation placement) dataset. Due to the small number of homeless households with a former looked after status (less than 1,100 in a year), further breakdowns are not published routinely.

The Scottish Government recognises that childcare costs continue to be a challenge for many parents and carers. That is why the Programme for Government set out ambitious commitments to expand access to childcare as part of our mission to tackle child poverty.

However, I would note that Scotland already has the most generous offer in the UK. We are the only part of the UK to offer 1,140 hours a year of funded early learning and childcare to all 3- and 4-year-olds, and eligible 2-year-olds, regardless of their parents’ working status, putting children first. If families paid for this themselves, it would cost them more than £5,500 per eligible child per year.

The Minister for Housing has convened a Ministerial Oversight Group on Homelessness which brings together ten ministers from across the Scottish Government to identify the actions required across portfolios to prevent and end homelessness.

The group provides a space for shared political leadership and enhanced policy links with a view to ensuring everyone has a safe, warm place to call home. The last meeting was held on 20 March 2024 and had a focus on young people, including care experienced young people.

Membership, terms of reference, minutes and actions from the meetings can be found here – Ministerial Oversight Group on Homelessness - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

Outwith this group, policy officials across government work together on policy development and implementation with the aim of preventing homelessness for care experienced young people and veterans. This includes participating in A way Home Scotland Coalition meetings and Veterans Scotland Housing Group meetings as appropriate.

Restraint and seclusion should only ever be used as a last resort to prevent the risk of injury. Under existing guidance , all local authorities are asked to have policies in place governing the use of these practices and are asked to monitor their use.

As part of their scrutiny and improvement roles in schools, Education Scotland inspectors consider the impact of practice in relation to the use of physical intervention for children and young people.

To further improve practice in this area, the Scottish Government is developing new human-rights based guidance on the use of physical intervention in schools. We are due to publish the consultation analysis report on our draft physical intervention in schools guidance very shortly. We will then reconvene the physical intervention working group to make final revisions to the guidance.

Progress with this work can be followed via the working group’s webpage .